President Obama urges Mahmoud Abbas to keep peace process on course

President Barack Obama urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to continue working toward a framework for Mideast peace talks as the two met at the White House on Monday.

“Now is the time for not just the leaders of both sides but the peoples” to come together and “move forward in a new spirit of cooperation and compromise,” Obama said in the Oval Office at the start of their meeting, which comes ahead of a late-April deadline to develop a framework for peace talks.

After months of having Secretary of State John Kerry take the lead in talks, Obama is injecting a dose of presidential power in hopes of keeping the negotiations from veering off course. Abbas’s visit to Washington follows one earlier this month by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also met with Obama.

On Sunday, Abbas and Kerry had what the State Department described as a “frank and productive” conversation in preparation for Monday’s meeting. Kerry said that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians “should let tough political decisions at this stage stand in the way of a lasting peace” and encouraged Abbas “to make the tough decisions that will be necessary in the weeks ahead,” the State Department said.

Obama and Abbas met as snow fell outside the White House, just as it did during Netanyahu’s visit on March 3. “It’s a sign,” Obama said. Asked by a reporter what it was a sign of, Obama added, “I don’t know.”